What are the most expensive per square foot homes in America?

According to a recent study recently done by REALTOR.com San Jose Santa Clara had the most expensive per square foot averages across the country.

Drum roll — $1,500 a square foot, not far behind are San Francisco and Oakland with $1,200 a square foot.

Now what's the least expensive in the country? Least expensive is Decatur, Illinois at $102 and Youngstown, Ohio at $120 a square foot.

There's a big discrepancy between the two.

The reason I bring this up is because we need to know what our average per square foots are in our local market. And it's going to change by subdivision. It's going to change by micro markets. But overall, you need to know what your county averages are and then your subcategories in different market segments. That way you can speak to this as an expert.

The other thing you need to be able to do is bring these into a conversation with buyers and...

Why do offers get rejected?

This is an important thing to listen to because we're out competing against other offers all the time now. It's almost always a multiple offer situation and your buyers want to know why they lose.

The first thing you have to realize is that about 21% of the buyers that are out there in the market are cash buyers. That's the latest stats from NAR. That's a little bit up from where it was a few months ago, but it's not like it's all the buyers. Only 21% of the buyers are cash buyers. So that means of 10 buyers, two might be cash buyers. Something to be aware of is that when you're competing with a cash buyer, it can put you at a disadvantage. But it's not the only thing that sellers are considering.

A recent study that was done by NAR found these were the biggest reasons why people's offers were rejected:

1. A low offer

They didn't offer enough compared to the competition. It was not because it was cash or not...

How are you positioning yourself on social media to have impact?

A lot of us are doing a lot of social media, but is it having impact? Are people remembering you or are they just scrolling past your posts because they're filled with meaningless fluff?

If you want to have impact, here's one technique that'll really help you shine in your marketplace:

Storytelling.

Telling a story about your client's experience and what your clients are going through will help you build a relationship with people that are in your audience. It positions you as the expert, as the authority, as a trusted figure, as an advisor, as a counselor. But it will also help people remember you as a REALTOR.

Why?

Because stories are remembered. Stories create resonance and connections with other people. People love reading about people.

So I'm gonna give you a couple of examples of that:

I've got a couple of my great coaching students that I work with in my company....

Almost all of us are going to get multiple offers on at least one of our listings this year, probably several of them.

So what are you going to do to market the fact that you brought your sellers multiple offers?

One way you can do this is by modeling my friend Bill up in the Portland, Oregon market.

He received 13 offers on one of his listings! So what he did is he took a picture with him and his seller reviewing all those offers on the table. All 13 offers were spread across the table and labeled. And he took it at an angle where so you couldn't actually read the offers. You could just see them all laid out there with the seller smiling in the background.

And then he put a statement on social media and said:

"Hey, I got great news:

My seller came to me to market this property. Zillow said the home was worth $429k. We listed it at $459k and now we have an accepted offer well above $500,000 for this home."

What is this post doing?

It's...

Why would you use a pending sign? A lot of REALTORS use a pending sign because they want to encourage people to list their home with them. And they want to show off to the marketplace that their marketing actually worked.

But a pending sign can actually be the worst possible thing you can do for your marketing.

Why?

Because when homeowners in your neighborhood see your listing go up, that's when they're most likely to call you and be curious about the home. The pending sign can help a little bit, but you're going to miss out on the most qualified buyers you can have. 

And I'll give you a classic example:

My wife and I have identified an area of town we want to live in called Echo of the Pines. It's a beautiful area with some nice homes in the neighborhood but very few homes come on the market. The other night when we were driving home, we saw a new for sale sign. As a REALTOR, I get all these alerts, but they become noise and I tune them out.

According to Barron's magazine "The Mother of all Bidding Wars is Coming" 

They point to several key factors:

• The Mortgage Bankers Association Purchase Index for the week ending on June 5 was up 13% from the same week a year ago.
•  Robert Shiller, who predicted that house prices in the suburbs would rise faster than those in city centers in coming years, as buyers, now practiced at working from home, seek more social-distancing space.

• Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin (RDFN) says traffic growth for his online listings for houses in suburbs and small towns has outpaced that for in big cities by 164% over the past two months.

• Inventory of existing homes for sale was the lowest on record for the month, according to the National Association of Realtors. And bank forbearance has reduced foreclosures, further restricting supply. How do you thrive in a low supply market?

Watch this video for tips on working with buyers and sellers when inventory is at all time low and bidding...